Intellectual Stimulation, Individualized Support, and Modeling Professional Practices

Tips to Get Started:

  • “Reframe the narratives used to explain LGBTQIA students’ experiences in schools. While it is certain that LGBTQIA are bullied and face challenges in schools, those experiences are not the sum of who they are or their experiences.” (Lewis & Kern, 2018, p. 191)
  • “Create gay–straight alliances that are attentive not only to sexuality, but also to issues of race, class, and gender.” (Lewis & Kern, 2018, p. 191)

Developing Internal Capacity

You can develop internal capacity to address the needs of LGBTQ+ youth with district-based training from Welcoming Schools, a project of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

“The Welcoming Schools team works with districts to increase the internal capacity for districts to improve school climate by training facilitators within the district to deliver Welcoming Schools content to district educators.

“In a district-wide training, Welcoming Schools initially works with district leadership to select a cohort of in-district facilitators. These individuals are trained on site by Welcoming Schools staff during a four-day institute that equips them with the skills and tools to deliver Welcoming Schools professional development modules to elementary schools throughout their district.”

Professional Development Training For Your School, (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.welcomingschools.org/training/request-a-training/

What does the research say about the role of teachers in student safety?

“At the individual student level, our findings indicate that when students report inclusion of LGBTQ isues in the curriculum, have accessible information related to LGBTQ issues, and when teachers intervene in sexual orientation- and gender nonconformity- based harassment, they perceive their schools as safer for gender nonconforming male students...Thus, school policies and GSAs may be pre-conditions to school safety. In such contexts, safety may be more dependent on teacher intervention in LGBTQ bias-related harassment or bullying and access to LGBTQ information at the school (Russell & McGuire, 2008)" (Toomey, Russell, & McGuire, 2012, p. 194; emphasis added).

What does the research say about the effects of teachers' lack of knowledge?

“Concepts of gender diversity and inclusion are rare components of elementary curriculum plans. The gender education that tends to come out in the classroom of the gender restrictive school is the hidden or implicit curriculum of values and expectations reinforcing the gender binary, with adults policing masculinity and femininity. Unfortunately, teachable moments providing the opportunity to interrupt this dominant discourse are allowed to pass due to teachers’ inexperience and lack of knowledge. When teachers sidestep gender situations or questions that make them uncomfortable, gender becomes part of the null curriculum, that which is not taught (Eisner, 1985)" (Luecke, 2018, p. 8).

References

Lewis, M.M. and Kern, S. (2018). Using Education Law as a Tool to Empower Social Justice Leaders to Promote LGBTQ Inclusion. Educational Administration Quarterly, 54(5), 723–746. https://doi-org.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/10.1177/0013161X18769045

Luecke, J. C. (2018). The gender facilitative school: Advocating authenticity for gender expansive children in pre-adolescence. Improving Schools, 21(3), 269–284. https://doi-org.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/10.1177/1365480218791881

Toomey, R. B., Russell, S. T., & McGuire, J. K. (2012). Heteronormativity, school climates, and perceived safety for gender nonconforming peers. Journal of Adolescence, 35(1), 187–196. https://doi-org.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/10.1016/j.adolescence.2011.03.001